Clocks for Guitar

Joan Tower's second work for guitar, explores musical expressions of the concept of time. A group of repeated notes which "tick" like a swinging pendulum opens the work; this gesture resounds throughout the virtuosic nine-minute piece in the repetition of various motives, chords, and musical figurations. "Clocks" also deals with the "historical time" by drawing inspiration from Tower's own past. The work's Spanish overtones derive from the flamenco and Latin American dance music she heard while growing up in South America, while a chord progression borrowed from the last movement of Haydn's Piano Sonata in E flat, opus 82 -- one whose relative time values Tower has distorted through elongation -- pays homage to the years she spent as a concert pianist.